​Healthy Stool in Rabbits

​Photos and edited by Susan Horton, DVM

Normal Fecal Pellets

The key to healthy stools starts with lots of fresh timothy or orchard grass hay. The more fiber, the better. If you feed to many carbohydrates, the cecum may start to function improperly. This can lead to serious health problems. The normal, healthy rabbit produces 90 to 150 healthy pellets a day.

Rabbits are coprophagic. This means they eat these special healthy cecal pellets to receive complete nutrition. If you are finding these uneaten pellets around your rabbit, it can indicate health problems.

Pictured below are two pictures of mucousy stool. The first is from a hospitalized rabbit starting to recover from a very sick cecum. Sometimes, these are the first stools that we see with recovery. Sometimes the are simply small and multiple. The rabbit is not considered healthy until the large healthy stools pictured to the left return.

Mucousy Stool

Clear Mucous Stool

Clear mucous may be produced with serious cecal problems. These rabbits need to be in the hospital!

Of course any time your rabbit stops producing stool, it is considered an emergency!